Spacetime
by White Camel
Summary: From the very first bite, Luffy's fate was sealed. Instead of gorging on the Gomu Fruit, Luffy accidentally dined on a fruit that granted him with the ability to perceive matter, and therefore travel through time and space. Things just got complicated.
1. Five?

**Title: The Very First Bite**

**Prologue: Five?**

**A/N:**

**I've been wanting to write something along these lines for so long now, but I've been super lacking in motivation. This hasn't been beta-ed or anything at the moment, so it's pretty much in it's rawest state. If you want to beta at all, please do so, because then I would love you forever.**

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><p>From the very first bite, Luffy's entire fate was sealed. The fruit itself was disgusting, smelling of sour vinegar and tasted like sand, cat hair and sweat. Even the texture revolted him; gritty and bitter, with a thin shin of sulphurous liquid that pooled at his chubby, round fingertips, feeling the residue of condensation, yet at the same time perspiration at the somewhat impossibly sensations of extreme heat and extreme cold at the very same time. It was a vile shade of deep grey, leaning towards a greenish hue, like damp, hairy moss, flaking hideous flecks of slimy skin. However, with a childish curiosity, he took a tentative bite, barely peeling the abhorrent outer shell.<p>

The gruesome fruit wailed on the tip of his tongue, scratching at his tongue and jamming into his milky white teeth, as if it wished to jump back out. Luffy, with great difficulty, swallowed in a stubborn, nonsensical fit. It scraped his throat as flowed down, scratching and clawing, as though alive.

Suddenly, Luffy's fingers began to tingle, as though they'd remained still for far too long. A sensation of pins and needles softly enveloped the rugged, bitten fingernails, and his eyes felt bleary with tears and tiredness. He felt energized, and a sleepy contentment filled his belly with sudden warmth. He looked back down at the grey, ugly fruit in his palms with a wan smile, glaring at the food with sudden, intense greed.

Beneath the pealed, nauseating, wretched skin, a somewhat juicier, softer inside lay, pooling in a kaleidoscope of the entire spectrum of colour. Blue, green, orange, yellow, purple, pink, every single pigment you can imagine, and a few that had never yet been discovered, new and fresh to Luffy's naked eyes. He ripped his teeth through the silky flesh, the juice dribbling down his chin. The taste was almost indescribable; like warm liquor, sunshine, the smell of dust after rain, sweets, caramelized sugar, the list was endless.

Far too soon, Luffy realized the food was gone, and desperately licked his hands in dismay. The sudden life and joy was gone, replaced by a bleary, bleak reality. He was standing in a pub. There was too much noise. He wanted to go outside.

Outside! Luffy cheerfully strutted to the door, eager to feel the vibrations of the air, to hear the cry of seagulls and to see the sloshing waves in the distance. The babble of raucous voices was too much, and he eagerly stretched for the doorknob.

"Oi, Luffy, where're you going?" Shanks grinned around a mouthful of beef, clumsily waving his fork with each syllable as he leaned back on his plush red barstool. His velvety, raspy voice was barely audible; there was too much noise.

"Outside," Luffy grumpily huffed. He couldn't quite remember why he was angry at Shanks, but he knew it was because of the man's goofy antics (because it always was), and he knew that he still hadn't forgiven the red-haired man yet.

"Hey, what's that around your mouth?" Shanks ponderously asked, leaning further on his stool, the fork still brandished high. Comprehension dawned on his scruffy features, and his mouth popped open in a little 'o'.

"Hey boss, where'd the fruit go?"

In situations like these, all a man could do was repeatedly curse, no matter whether he was in the company of a rather young child. Luffy blankly stared at his idol, the long stream of foreign language entirely unrecognizable.

Shanks lunged at the boy, eyes bulging frenziedly as he grabbed the air in absolute sheer fright.

"Luffy! You didn't eat anything weird, right?" Shanks bellowed, shaking the young boy repetitively. "You can't have! How did you…"

"Yeah, there was something really weird over there. It tasted funny," Luffy replied without an ounce of hesitation. He didn't quite understand the consequences of his bottomless stomach, and so vacantly busied himself with the act of vigorously picking his own nostrils.

Shanks paused, his mouth agape in absolute horror. The room hushed to a deadly quiet; each person paused in the act of gulping unhealthy doses of alcohol and food.

"You have got to be kidding," Shanks pitifully whimpered. "No freaking way! Quick, go back in time and fix things!"

Luffy, entirely confused, spoke the only rational thought that came to his head. "I can't, because if I changed the course of time so that I didn't eat the fruit, I would create an inconsistent time line, thus causing a paradox which would destroy the entire universe and cause myself to become stuck in the small gap between space and time, which I can assure you wouldn't be particularly pleasant."

The wisdom of this sentence was slightly decreased by the fact that he'd been busily digging further up his nose, in search for a rather large lump of snot, as he spoke.

"You _have_ to be absolutely kidding me," Shanks roared. "You stupid, snotty, big-headed, small, bug-eyed little crapstick! That's cost me ten billion beli!"

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><p>After thorough apologies towards Luffy, who, although not knowing the majority of his insults, was still remarkably offended, Shanks grumpily swilled glass after glass of rum, little Luffy staring into space as he hummed a wobbly rendition of '<em>A Pirate's Life for Me'<em>.

"Sorry, Shanks," Luffy then said, tapping his foot to an inconsistent, slightly confused beat.

Shanks' head fell to the tabletop with a loud, resounding bang. To Luffy's limited perception, each crewmember looked a little dreary, nursing cups of alcohol as if it were their only life source.

"That's okay, Luffy," Shanks mumbled, his voice greatly muffled by the surface.

There was a great pause, full of the dead, hushed tones of the crew, filling into a meaningless babble that chorused along the warm, wooden brown bar.

"So, what does this fruit-thing do?"

Shanks limply raised his crimson head, groggily scratching his stubbly chin as he clutched his mug of sustenance closer to his chest. "It's a _Mondai Mondai _Fruit, Luffy," Shanks grumbled, chugging another firey mouthful down his throat. It tickled his throat, as sweat as warm honey.

"Yeah, whatever," Luffy sneered, flapping his hand nonchalantly. "What does it do?"

Shanks blinked, wrinkling his nose as he stared straight ahead. "You should know what it does!" he snapped.

"Oh yeah, sure," Luffy shrugged. "It causes the gluttonous man whom ate it to develop a sudden sixth sense. Well, practically a tenth sense if you count the other four, although most people don't so that would probably be confusing and impractical for them. Back to the point, they wield a sudden powerful knowledge on the subject of _matter_, something that has baffled the greatest minds to this very day, and possibly very far into the future. The user –me- with enough knowledge to sustain his power, can then bend, warp and travel through matter."

"What? How?" Shanks pardoned, barely catching the fragments of all of this strange meaningless gibberish spewing from the young boy's mouth. "There are nine senses?"

"Yes, but that isn't important," Luffy dismissed. "As you probably know, matter is the single component which builds this entire world, possibly entire universe. It is anything that occupies space, possesses mass, offers resistence and can be felt by one or more of our senses. Of course, the definition for this is somewhat shaky, as matter is a very complicated subject indeed. One that I will _not _go into," Luffy exasperatedly sighed, hushing the question that danced on the tip of Shanks' tongue.

Luffy began busying himself with the zealous task of picking his nose, an act that apparently helped him to think to a better extent. He swung his legs (which hung about a foot from the floor), continuing with his knowledgeable tirade.

"Wielded with this information, the user can comprehend the basis of his further power, which is the power of bending or warping reality, which, as we know, is actually space and time intrinsically linked to create spacetime-"

Shanks was about to protest that no, he did not know that, but Luffy rapidly continued on.

"When spacetime is bent, it forms something called a wormhole, which I can travel through to go back or forth in time, change the co-ordinates of my current occupation or both, and then proceed to have the time of my life."

Shanks narrowed his eyes, staring at Luffy in utter confusion. "Errrr…that's great. Now what does it _really_ do?"

Luffy sighed for the second time. "Man eats fruit. Man can go to different places. Man can change time. Ugga ugga!" He thumped his fist on his chest for good measure.

Shanks tapped Luffy's head with his fist; hard enough to produce a slight ugly bump on the back of the small boy's skull. "Rude jerk you are," he growled, a vein protruding from his forehead.

"Oooow," Luffy whined.

"Tch, baby."

"I'm not a-"

"-Wait," Shanks interjected. "So now that you know all of this weird stuff, does that make you a child genius?"

Luffy frowned, cocking his head in thought. A slow grin gradually spread across his face. "Yes, I suppose it does," he beamed, basking chirpily in the compliment.

"Oh really?" Shanks mocked, resting his elbow on the table and his head on his hand. "What's two plus two?"

"Errr…"

"Come on, you're a child genius, right?" Shanks teased, taking another sip of rum.

"Five?" Luffy frowned, thoughtfully raising his head to the sky as he busied himself with eagerly scouring his left nostril with a single long, pink digit.

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><p><strong>So there you go. :)<strong>

**I hope you liked that. In truth, I've been totally flunking all the Science-y subjects, so I've only really been picking up my knowledge of "spacetime" and "matter" through nerdy programs like Doctor Who and the Matrix. I'm probably wrong in absolutely everything I've just written, so feel free to correct me.**


	2. The Wormhole

**SpaceTime**

**Chapter 1: The Wormhole**

**A/N:**

**I was considering publishing the first chapter over the weekend or something, but the amazing reviews from some wonderful people gave me the enthusiasm to draft another short chapter. Sorry for how brief it is, my brain didn't quite want to continue onwards past the 1,000 word count.**

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><p>Luffy had never especially utilized his great power to achieve something incredible. He sometimes zapped around creating hazardous mischief when feeling sensationally devilish, but he understood the implications of what his ability could do. It wasn't as though he had <em>moral standards<em> (yuck!), but rather he wasn't even capable of some feats of sheer power. The genius inside would always shout; "No, too dangerous!" at the very last milisecond, a habit that became increasingly irritable.

The 'genius inside' wasn't even a real person, or a blatant sign of schizophrenia, but more of an expression the townsfolk used when referring to his extremely rare blasts of spontaneous intellectual ability. The majority of the time, he couldn't even spell his own name, but when the subject of 'time' was introduced, he garbled nonsensical, long words as though his own life depended on it, often accompanied by the indecent squelching of his nose being scoured for snot. In fact, these tirades were so rare that they were apparently the only opportunity Luffy took to clean his nostrils, a fact that could only be described as extremely unpleasant.

However, when Luffy saw a propaganda poster depicting the strongest marine base in the East Blue, he noticed a little section of smudged, barely recognizable small print. The genius inside giggled frantically with excitement, bubbling with facts inside Luffy's simple-minded head.

"Look! That's a co-ordinate! Let's go there!" the genius seemed to scream, mentally pointing like a madman.

"I don't know, it looks dangerous…" Luffy mumbled aloud, tugging the poster from the papery wall plastered on a shabby seaside hotel.

"Pfft, danger schmanger! Since when did you care?"

Luffy grinned, realizing that no, he did not care, and wished very terribly to visit Shells Town.

The sun sat grumpily as a cloudy blob of light beneath a thin veil of fluffy white clouds, which bounced across a pastel blue sky like a herd of chirpy, merry sheep. Luffy's hometown was somewhat quiet, considering it was somewhat of a tourist attraction during these particular months. A gentle murmur condensed the air, soft and calm, like the sea on a good day.

The teenage boy sighed unhappily. To this very point, he'd had absolutely no opportunities to live out his dream of becoming Pirate King. Ace had already voyaged into the sunset, leaving Luffy tired, bored and remarkably jealous. It was somewhat depressing, since he had the clenching sensation in his gut that spitefully whispered envious remarks towards his beloved brother, claiming that Ace would betray his trust and attempt to attain the title of Pirate King for himself. He knew his own resent was silly, and bitterly squashed the forethought down.

But now the opportunity arose. He realized that he could never practice his remarkable ability to it's full potential because he could never decipher the direct course of his moves. The little genius had been trying to tell him; "It's too dangerous, but not if you do _this_," but he'd willingly ignored the protesting contemplation on the grounds that he didn't _need _to know everything, since he had the coolest devil fruit power ever!

Luffy focused on the teeny tiny co-ordinate, imagining the specific point on the globe in his 'clever mode', and examining that tiny pinpoint until he could precisely locate the exact site of his landing. This took an extraordinary amount of focus; something the young boy wasn't very accustomed to, yet he followed his first instinct on the subject, instinct being something that had never yet failed him.

The next step was severely exhausting, and usually left Luffy feeling giddy and unstable afterwards. He held both arms directly parallel to the surface of his planted, sandaled feet, and grasped the air in his hands, abruptly making a motion similar to that of tearing paper. A faint ripple could be seen in the sudden warped reality, akin to disturbed water softly lapping in it's artificial waves. He sucked in a deep breath.

To travel through the wormhole he had now created, Luffy needed enough energy equal to that of a star exploding, which was quite a lot of energy. Luckily, his abilities granted him with the capability of summoning the unused vigor within space and directly transferring the energy through energy waves to teleport to his approximate location, which his devil fruit located, lured and lapped up like a thirsty dog. It was an extremely complicated process, although one that only took estimately three quarters of a second. However, after the consistent teleportation and transmission of energy from the burning stars, he was left with such a small portion of what energy the teleportation and transmission had used, that the process was almost pointless. Luckily, the universe was a rather large place, and so, at that particular moment, one million, nine thousand and twenty three stars had been exploding in sheer beautiful joy.

Left with the animated joy of a one million, nine thousand and twenty three exploding stars (which would probably be worth billions upon trillions upon millions cups of coffee) he leapt through the small rip in the dimensions of reality he had fashioned, and yelled out in absolute exhilaration at glorious sight as he passed through the portal. Most people would imagine heaven as a white, cloudy scene, with lots of harps and pretty ladies. Luffy thought of heaven as the brief flashes of an absolutely beautiful scene; he was floating through space at a remarkable rate, observing the glorious planets, galaxies and blundering, bizarre alien countries. Meteors burned through atmospheres, colliding into planets of a vast variety of shapes and sizes and detonating in blasts of colourful fire and shockwaves. The universe was remarkable, amazing, and sheer fantastically wonderful as if ripped from a crazy fantasy story written by the greatest author to ever exist.  
>Luffy burst from the other side, hair wildly blown backwards and hat shakily clasped between a pair of frightened fingertips. Each experience was always more shocking than the last, and it took him a while to stagger back to reality after each ecstatic expedition.<p>

Pasty white in his adrenaline rushing state, Luffy was swept by the rushing crowds, which brushed along the roads like a broomstick with rabies. The tidal wave of people carried him closer to the marine base than he'd originally intended, and he observed the large, enshrouding walls of the Marine's 153rd Branch with rickety anticipation, still extremely bewildered by his ride yet excitable for the chance of provoking adventure. He scrambled up the yellowing, cracked wall as elegantly as possible (which wasn't very elegant at all) and grinned impishly at the scene beyond the large brick barrier.

"Hmph, looks like you're in trouble," Luffy sing-songed, much to the green-haired man's irritation.

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><p><strong>Thanks so much for reading, I really hope you enjoyed it. :-)<strong>


	3. A Mirage

**Spacetime**

**Chapter 2: A Mirage**

**A/N: **

**Sorry for how short and late this chapter is. Hopefully I'll be able to bust out a new, super long chapter out soon, but in the meantime I hope you enjoy this one. :-) **

**Also, make sure to answer the poll on my profile. I'll love you forever if you do. **

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><p>Zoro Roronoa gazed through bleary, itchy eyes, through the blaring sunlight high in the glassy blue sky, which poured rivulets of burning fire into the scorching bloodshot veins. Across the sandy, deserted area lacking entirely in vegetation, where there was only the pasty, dry sand and dirt to cling to his gritty sandals and calloused feet, and then further over the enforced, ten foot high wall, a little brat grinned chidingly right in his direction as he straddled the circular perimeter, as if coaxing a little pup from it's hiding place.<p>

"Who the hell are you?" Zoro yelled, although nothing more than a whisper slipped past a gasping, parched tongue and dehydrated, crackling lips, which split and bled, swiftly caking blood onto the tip of his foul, bitter tasting grimy tongue. He retained his composure, keeping his chin held high, which was graced with sickly, unkempt stubble. His vest remained soaked in sweat and filth, his honourable green sash reduced to nothing but tattered remains on the arid, baked clumps of desiccated mud. The red-hot sting of burning flesh marred every exposed surface, his skin sweltering in the intense rivulets of careless, stabbing sunlight.

"I'm Luffy D. Monkey, Time Traveler and Future Pirate King. What about you?" the boy beamed, poised casually above the wall in a callous slouch as he swung both tanned, sandaled feet, each time kicking the wall to a mindless, droning, and unquestionably irritating rhythm.

Instantly, Zoro snapped. "I don't know what kind of sick joke this is, but back the hell off," he barked, hissed speech wavering like a wheezing dog. The boy blankly remained seated, adjusting the oversized, ratty straw hat on his untidy mane of black hair. At the boy's silence, Zoro wilted like a wounded beggar, arms still painfully outstretched alongside the outspread, splintering wooden cross with rugged, scraping, wiry entwined rusty, golden strands of hay. "Just go away," he growled, as if abandoning his interest in the boy and turning back to dying.

Luffy sighed, squinting at the long expanse of a beautifully blue, clear sky and curiously, briefly wondering exactly how far he was looking into space, and how many planets stretched along that expanse, and how many stars were exploding within that very second, expanding into black holes amongst the hazy darkness littered with diamonds and whirling lumps of rock and gas and all the other materials unheard of by man. This moment passed very briefly, since the idiotic side of Luffy genuinely didn't actually care.

"Look, Luffy began, sighing like a mother scolding a child. "I can easily get you out, so why are you being such a bossy-boots?"

Zoro didn't reply, his head remaining bowed and concealed by the midnight black bandana, like the colour of space, yet far less intricate, and technically space was in actuality colourness, and only the illusion of black appeared since black was technically the absence of colour.

"What do you want from me?" Zoro wheezed. "Why can't people just mind their own business and let me die?"

Luffy scowled, jumping from the wall with a slight grunt and scuffle, but otherwise with as much elegance and ease that Luffy would ever be capable of exuding (which, in actuality, wasn't much). He took several long strides until coming directly parallel to the pitiful man, only approximately 2 meters away. Dim shadows cast along his tanned, roguish features, highlighting the undoubtedly incredibly deep, marring stitched scars dangerously close to the large, blank honest eyes of the unusually small, dark boy. "Don't be so pathetic," Luffy snarled, squaring his shoulders as he walked closer and spat on the dirt right beside Zoro's limp, soiled toes. "Where's your pride as a man?" he growled, anger simmering below the surface. "Where's that big strong guy I've heard about?"

Zoro lifted his head, glaring in silent defiance. They both stared for a moment, holding each other's gaze as Luffy fisted a shaking, balled hand by his sides. There were no sounds, apart from the sound of a faint breeze whistling and whimpering through the air. The sun briefly fell behind cloud cover, and Zoro looked away, sighing in contentment as he blissfully rose a sweating, burning brow against the smoothing, caressing cold breeze. Luffy exhaled, and once again raised five bare, bitten fingernails to the brim of his hat, removing the sentimental object from atop his lion's mane of wild, carefree locks.

"I guess you have your own reasons for this," Luffy relented, raising his thumb to itch the base of his practically empty head. "I mean, you're not the brightest guy around," he indifferently intoned. Extremely offended by this statement, Zoro was about to retort, until Luffy silence him by continuing on. "But I'd probably do the same in your situation, whatever it is."

At this, he took a step closer and roughly planted his straw hat on Zoro's extremely mortified head, giving it a little twist just to make sure it remained on. Luffy took a step back, wiping his hands together as he stood to admire his handiwork.

"What are you-!"

"There, that should keep the sun off your face for now," Luffy grinned. "Now remember, that hat means a lot to me, I've had it since I was five years old. Be careful with it, okay?" He turned his back, and then began to march away.

"Like h-!"

"I'm going to entrust it with you for now, so stay alive, otherwise I'll kill you."

About to persist with Luffy's faulty logic, Zoro once again attempted to open his mouth and reason with the ignorant idiot, yet, all at once and yet in the span of perhaps a second or two, the boy was sucked into mid-air, his image distorting like a mirage, or a reflection on ripples of water, and as he disappeared a faint, dainty POP! ensued.

With the disappearance of the weird boy, the sun burst through the sorrowful clouds, once again engaging with Zoro in a battle of angry heat and the lapping tongues of fire. "What an absolute moron," he growled under his breath, wondering if he was, in fact, actually going crazy.

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><p><strong>Thanks so much for reading, and please review. :-) xx <strong>


	4. Hiatus

This story is now on hiatus, sorry. :-(


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